Songs of Surrender Part 1 - what worked, and what didn’t

Songs of Surrender was released on 17 March 2023. In recognition of its second anniversary, Ian Ryan will be taking a look back at one of U2’s more … interesting phases.

It was an era full of complications. The lingering effects of Covid were still weighing on the world. People had stopped practicing how to be “normal,” regardless of how normal or abnormal their “normal” was. Bono had written his autobiography, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story and had done a full theatre tour to support it. It was a show as much about U2 as it was about Bono, and it was full of U2’s music, but with only one member of U2 on stage.

The full band were preparing a multi-month residency in Las Vegas, Nevada, at a brand-new type of venue, the Sphere. The founder of the band, Larry Mullen, Jr., was finally tackling health issues he had been putting off addressing for years, difficulties caused by the very music he helped make. The Edge was making it known just how much of U2’s creative process he actually was in control of, producing Songs of Surrender. Adam Clayton was raising his first child, born in 2017, but was also approaching an amicable divorce from his wife in April 2024. It was a time of resets, new experiences, and forced and unforced breathing room for the band, all in the middle of an incredibly destructive and socially disruptive global calamity.

As a nod to the era of U2 we have just left, I’ll spend the weeks of March and April looking back at Songs of Surrender. There will be a retrospective for each of the four discs of the project, with a few thoughts about SoS sprinkled in. I’ll compare the SoS versions of tracks to the original album versions. I’ve been thinking about the album, and while I do still think it is absolutely U2’s worst to date, I’ve been trying to have more sympathy with how and why it might have happened, with a feeling that it wasn’t as bad as it originally seemed.

Disc One - The Edge

1. “One”

This is the second mellow song in a row that U2 has used to kick off an album, given that they generally rely on more energetic first tracks. It is easy to think that they put “One” as the first song on the album because of its title or quality as a song, but it also sets the tone for SoS as a whole. It’s withdrawn, wounded, and looking for a place of safety and weakness rather than having the risk and strength of the original version. The vocals at the end are about community and closeness, rather than the alienation and anger of its ‘90s cousin.

2. “Where The Streets Have No Name”

The original version of this song starts in synthy first gear and then ramps up until it reaches fifth gear. The SoS version starts in synthy first gear and stays there. It never escapes the ethereal vibe of The Joshua Tree’s start. More than any other track on this album, this version of Streets could have been on that The Ethereal U2 tribute album from 2013. Bono changes the lyrics to the song, but not in any meaningful way, just with different decorations around the edges of it.

3. “Stories For Boys”

The Edge takes over for Bono on vocals on this song, and he’s the only one playing an instrument. This is an Edge solo track. The lyrics get changed from Bono experiencing confusion about growing up to the Edge telling us a secret. If the new lyrics are read as being autobiographical, the song becomes about the Edge’s creative process. He explains to us how he tells stories, how his creative process works, and how he can’t always turn it off. “There’s a place I go to that isn’t a part of me, like a radio with no controls.” Their music comes from the sky down, as Bono says. The somber, spartan, minor key quality of the song makes it seem like this might not be a good thing, or at least an easy thing.

4. “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”

This is one of the few tracks on the album that might surpass the original version. The arrangement of the song is more interesting than the boys’ choir version that was on the 1980 single. Although suitable for the time, Larry’s hard drum sound never quite worked for me in the original version. Since the Elevation tour, they’ve been playing more seductive, slinky versions of the song, and it really pays off in this rendition. There aren’t many true successes on SoS, but this is one of them. The Edge’s acoustic guitar playing at the end is also wonderful.

5. “Out Of Control”

This is such an awesome song that I don’t think it’s possible to make a bad version of it. This one certainly isn’t bad, but it feels like it would have been more at home in an acoustic session on a radio station or talk show. It REALLY misses the Edge’s vocal harmonies. This version feels more like a gimmick or one-off than an album-worthy track, an affliction that hits a lot of the songs on SoS.

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There was an obvious tie-in between Bono’s autobiography Surrender, the U2 album Songs of Surrender, and the U2:UV shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas. The versions of U2 songs on Songs of Surrender are the arrangements used on the audio version of Bono’s Surrender, played during his solo tour for the book, and performed in U2:UV when the band went off the strict setlist that matched the pre-designed graphics. It makes me wonder how long all of this was planned and how much it just came together after the world started to open up again.

Adam mentioned that U2 were working on stripped-down versions of their songs after the release of Songs of Experience, and this is what they ended up releasing. There was obviously a ton of creativity, planning, and effort put into the Surrender/SoS/Sphere period of U2, but the U2 fandom at large hasn’t responded to it. To me personally, it doesn’t feel like a cohesive, this-is-a-stake-in-the-ground U2 era, even though there was still a distinct period of creative output from them.

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6. “Beautiful Day”

The vibe of the original version’s chorus has taken over the whole song. Bono really makes the bridge feel at home in Dublin, drawing his local neighborhood into Steinbeckian conversations about Cain and Abel. Bono talks about the brothers’ (and his) biblical forebears, Adam and Eve, who also happen to be his bandmate and his daughter. He hits on the very Pop-ish concept of humans kicking God out, rather than God kicking humans out. A lot to chew on, but none of it as interesting or freeing as the original version. Taking the vibe of the bridge and making it the entire song isn’t as rich as the original version.

7. “Bad”

The explicit statement that this is a song of surrender doesn’t take me out of the song completely, but it is a big stumbling block. U2, who tend to deploy their subtlety less freely than their bluntness, shove the listener’s face into the idea that it is a song of surrender. It serves as a clarifying point similar to “This is not a rebel song” at the start of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” on Under a Blood Red Sky, or when Bono starts yelling “This is a love song” during live performances of “Discothèque” on the Vertigo tour.

8. “Every Breaking Wave”

Perhaps the most pointless entry on the album for hardcore fans, and one of the things that makes me think this album is for casual fans. This arrangement of “Every Breaking Wave” has already been used on the deluxe version of Songs of Innocence, every time the song has been played live, in the “New Radio Mix,” and the “Radio Piano Version.” The original version may be familiar to people who heard the album Songs of Innocence (thanks, Apple!), so this alternate piano-focused arrangement could be new to them. For the die-hard fan, it’s just repetition.

9. “Walk On (Ukraine)”

The original “Walk On” is one of my favourite U2 songs of all time. I think it is an amazing work, and it really helped me through one of the most difficult eras of my life. Most people say “40” should be the last song U2 ever perform live, but I would be unspeakably happy if it was “Walk On.” I could listen to Edge’s end guitar riff and Bono singing “Hallelujah” forever, if they gave me the chance.

I lived in Uzhgorod, Ukraine for part of a summer after high school, and what Russia has done to that nation of generous people is beyond disgusting and evil. Both the aforementioned important components of this new version of the song are dear to me, yet somehow it still feels like less than the sum of its parts. The new lyrics seem too slapdash. It is turned into a tribute to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the famous comic-turned-steadfast-president of Ukraine, as the original version was a tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi. But the original version still thrived as a song of inspiration on its own, whereas the new version is a song of recognition and tribute. It is a sincere veneration of a man who clearly loves his country more than many of us can imagine, but I hope it only stays around for this era of the band.

10. “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”

Pride has been one of U2’s staple songs for 40 years now. It is a foundational track of their career, and it is understandable that they might want to try new ways of playing it. The Edge’s acoustic guitar in the SoS version is gorgeous, a prime example of that silvery range that he owns. But they cheat, incorporating Bono’s vocals from the original recording on The Unforgettable Fire. It’s like they want the sense of urgency and energy that the original version had, but in a stripped down and acoustic way. It’s a Bono from four decades ago that betrays the vibes of Edge’s lovely guitar.

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The concept of “surrender” is vague throughout this album. Bono explicitly says, “This is a song of surrender” in the SoS version of “Bad.” What does that mean?

If you go with anything close to the original stated meaning of the song, of how they watched people in their neighborhoods in Dublin succumb to drug addiction, then it seems like a song of fight, not surrender. It’s about working through the struggle and the addiction, with all the internally and externally destructive behavior included. Much of the fight against addiction and depression is a fight without a clear goal ahead. It’s a fight to leave something, not a fight with a distinct prize. I don’t understand the idea of surrender talked about here.

Beyond that, U2 have two songs explicitly about surrender - “Surrender” and “Moment of Surrender,” that weren’t included in this project at all. It’s hard to imagine that the titles were too on-the-nose when the first song on the album is “One” and the fortieth song on the album is “40”…

©Ryan/U2 and Us, 2025